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But I did it.

Halfway down the block I stopped, looked back once. Just once.

The building sat there, dumb and solid, blue door crooked, one curtain slightly more crooked. Somewhere inside, Olivia Heart slept in a shitty apartment with almost nothing to her name.

Nothing spectacular, Vale had said.

He was wrong.

I could already tell.

Yeah, I thought, turning away. I’m fucked.

Chapter 4

Liv

I rolled off the sofa and hit the floor with a thud that rattled my teeth.

“Fuck,” I groaned into the carpet.

My phone was under my ribs, digging into a place I needed for breathing. I dragged it out, thumb already swiping across the screen. The time glared up at me.

5:17 a.m.

“Fuck,” I said again, louder and with conviction this time.

I’d stayed up late . . . again. The book had done what books kept doing to Liv: grabbing me by the throat, promising only one more chapter, and walking me straight into sleep deprivation and a concerning attachment to fictional murder men.

I shoved myself upright. My neck hurt, and my lower back had filed a complaint too. The mug from last night sat on the coffee table, cold tea in the bottom and a ring on the wood.

Judging me.

I grabbed the first clothes I found. Black jeans from the chair. Tank top from the floor that passed the sniff test. And an oversized hoodie with a coffee stain on the pocket.

I went to the bathroom and threw water on my face, then dragged my hair into a low, messy braid.

My neck itched.

I paused with my fingers beneath my jaw, nails scraping the same patch of skin that had been bothering me. Nothing sat there when I checked the mirror. No mark. No glow. No pretty little mate-sigil like every other girl in New Abaddon seemed to get before she finished college, had a crisis, and developed a caffeine dependence and a not-so-secret smut hobby.

My coffee shop shift started at six. Twelve minutes to get out the door, ten-minute walk if the city didn’t decide to punish me with slow walkers. Totally doable.

I grabbed my bag, shoved my keys in my hoodie pocket, crammed my feet into my boots, and yanked the door open.

Then I stopped.

Right at eye level, carved into the blue paint of my doorframe, sat a sigil.

Not the thin, faded landlord ward that had been there since I moved in, half scrubbed by rain and time and bored demon kids. This one was new.

The lines bit cruelly into the wood, each stroke tight and deliberate. It had no decorative softness, no market charm energy, no “keeps the roaches out if you believe hard enough” nonsense.

This was functional.

This was mean.

The air around it fucking hummed.